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Music contributions
The SMC 2012 music program will focus on investigation of the conference’s theme: the illusion. From the simulations of the world sounds such as animal calls and environmental phenomena to a creation of imagined sonic realities, the illusions have always guided the creative endeavors of the music composers, performers, designers and technologists. Three concerts will feature an array of works contemplating what illusion means in the domains of electro-acoustic music, novel instrumental and interface design and music robotics. Sound installations and an additional performance will highlight the speaker as a sound object. Here are some details about the individual events:
1. Concert: Electro-acoustic Music
Curator: Spencer Topel
This concert will feature works for acoustic instruments drawn from FIGURA, a top Copenhagen-based new music ensemble and electronics. We particularly encourage compositions that involve live performance aspects and are under 10 minutes in duration. Available (single) performers: dark colored soprano (http://www.signeasmussen.dk; Preferred range D4 to A5), 4-string double bass, clarinet (all clarinets available) and percussion (vibraphone, cymbals, 4 toms, 2 bongos, saw, junk percussion such as metaltubes, brakes, styrofoam etc.).
2. Concert: Music for Novel Instruments and Interfaces
Curator: Chikashi Miyama
This concert will feature works for instruments and interfaces that manifest correlations between human body and sound in original and musically persuasive ways. We encourage submissions of composed and improvisatory performances that explore a new kind of virtuosity unachievable on the instruments of the previous eras.
3. Concert: Music Robots
Curator: Expressive Machines Musical Instruments
This concert features works for Electronic Music Machines Musical Instruments ensemble and their CADI2 (Configurable Automated Drumming Instrument), CARI (Cylindrical Aerophone Robotic Instrument) and AMI (Automated Monochord Instrument). We encourage proposals for new works. Selected composers will work closely with EMMI in the realization and premiere of their works.
4. Performance + Sound Installations: Uncommon Resonance: Speaker as Sound Object.
Curator: Paula Matthusen
A number of gallery venues around Copenhagen will display the selected works throughout the conference. A guided tour will be embedded in the conference program, and a special performance will be organized.
Full curatorial statements and bios:
Music Chair: Juraj Kojs
The SMC 2012 music program will focus on investigation of the conference’s theme: the illusion. From the simulations of the world sounds such as animal calls and environmental phenomena to a creation of imagined sonic realities, the illusions have always guided the creative endeavors of the music composers, performers, designers and technologists. Three concerts will feature an array of works contemplating what illusion means in the domains of electro-acoustic music, novel instrumental and interface design and music robotics. Sound installations and an additional performance will highlight the speaker as a sound object.
Music Chair’s bio:
Juraj Kojs is a Slovakian composer, performer, multimedia artist, producer, researcher and educator residing in the US. His compositions received awards at Europe—A Sound Panorama, Miami New Times Best Off Award, Eastman Electroacoustic Composition and Performance Competition and the Digital Art Award. Kojs has received commissions from The Quiet Music Ensemble, Miami Light Project and Meet the Composer. His research articles appeared in journals such as Organized Sound, Digital Creativity, Leonardo Music Journal, Journal of New Music Research and International Journal of Arts and Technology.
Kojs is the director of Foundation for Music Technologies (FETA) in Miami, FL. He holds a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies from University of Virginia. Kojs taught at Medialogy Department Aalborg University (Copenhagen, Denmark), Yale University and University of Virginia. Kojs is currently a full time faculty in the Audio Production Department at the Miami International University of Art and Design in Miami, FL. http://www.kojs.net/
Concert 1: Electro-acoustic Music
Curator: Spencer Topel
When the perceptibility of electronic and acoustic sources blur in live electronic performance, a hybridization of the two can yield altogether new forms. This concert aims to present pieces exploring the perceptual boundaries of what is real (acoustic) vs. processed (digital). We particularly encourage works involving novel decompositional methods, including but not limited to Independent Component Analysis applications to music creation, real-time similarity matching of audio samples and interactive systems utilizing Machine Learning methods. We particularly encourage works for acoustic instruments with live electronics. The available instrumentation (to be announced soon) will be drawn from a top Copenhagen-based ensemble.
Curator’s bio:
Spencer Topel’s music recently appeared on concert programs in major venues including Orchestra Hall, Minnesota, Chiesa di Sana Caterina Treviso, Venice, Spaulding Hall, Hanover, Alice Tully and Weill concert halls, New York, and In Tokyo City Opera Hall. Mr. Topel is also a top prizewinner in composition competitions including the American Modern Ensemble, the Palmer Dixon Prize for Outstanding Composition at Juilliard and the Diploma di Merito at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, as well as awards and commissions from organizations such as ASCAP, BMI, and Cornell University. As a visiting faculty member of Dartmouth College’s Digital Musics program, Mr. Topel engages in research on Music Information Retrieval and latent component analysis, groove retrieval, and teaches digital music composition. Upcoming projects in 2010-2011 include a site-adaptive sound/visual installation at the DeCordova Museum in Boston with artist Soo Sunny Park, and a new CD featuring works for string quartet with live-electronics. http://www.spencertopel.com/
Concert 2: Music for Novel Instruments and Interfaces
Historically, novel instrumental designs have been developed to promote expeditions to the new music territories. The capacity of novel instruments and interfaces to expand and transform the reality has stimulated a formation of unique soundscapes. This concert will feature works for instruments and interfaces that manifest correlations between the human body and sound in original and musically persuasive ways. We encourage submissions of composed and improvisatory performances that investigate virtuosity as impossible to achieve on instruments of the previous eras.
Curator’s bio:
Chikashi Miyama is a composer, video artist, interface designer, and performer. He received a MA from Kunitachi College of Music, Tokyo, Japan, a Nachdiplom from Music academy of Basel, Switzerland, and a Ph.D from University at Buffalo, New York, USA. He recently received a reserach grant from DAAD and he is currently working as a visiting researcher at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany. He received an ICMA student award (2011/UK), a Chancellor’s award (2011/USA), a second prize in SEAMUS commission competition (2010/St. Cloud, USA), a special prize in Destellos Competition (2009/Argentina), and a honorable mention in the Residence Prize section of the Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition (2002/France). His works and papers have been accepted by ICMC twelve times, by NIME four times, and selected by various international festivals in more than 100 times in 17 countries. http://chikashi.net/
Concert 3: Music Robots
Robotic musical instruments occupy a nebulous yet strongly suggestive matrix of positions, simultaneously pointing to novelty (science fiction) and nostalgia (the rich history of automated mechanical instruments including carillons, music boxes, and player pianos), physicality and virtuality, and both the playful and dangerous aspects of human creativity. Central to our reception of robotic devices is the illusion of agency. This illusion can be met with acceptance, dismissal, wonderment, repulsion, and a host of other responses. This concert asks participants to immerse themselves in this illusion. It offers a multifaceted exploration of the illusion’s various strains and ramifications. It simultaneously probes potential intersections between digitally controlled physical devices and contemporary musical practice. By offering up the reins of several robotic musical instruments to a variety of composers and compositional approaches, this program seeks to reveal and revel in some of the numerous possibilities proffered by such an ensemble.
Curator’s bio:
Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI) was founded in 2007 by composers Scott Barton, Steven Kemper, and Troy Rogers. EMMI designs and builds robotic instruments that are made by musicians, for musicians. EMMI’s string, percussion, and wind instruments merge digital precision, analog fluidity, and acoustic richness. Rather than imitating human performers, EMMI’s unique instruments offer expanded capabilities that push sonic boundaries and challenge preconceived expectations. EMMI’s musical output reflects collaboration between three composers with distinct compositional voices. The group’s kinetic sound art installations provide portals through which the virtual domain embraces its physical past and points to potential futures that prompt meditations on time, space, technology, nature, progress, and nostalgia. http://www.expressivemachines.org/
4. Sound Installations. Uncommon Resonance: Speaker as a sound object.
We encourage submission of sound installations and performances with live or fixed electronics that deconstruct and/or reconfigure the speaker as an intrinsic and physical part of the work. Speakers are often the terminal point of creating myriads of illusions – ranging from the simulation of virtual acoustic spaces or imagined instruments. “Uncommon Resonance” aims to recognize speakers as a physical object in space, and engage with the ways in which they create unique auditory worlds.
The installations will be dispersed throughout a variety of locations in the city, taking place over an extended duration so that people may interact with the works directly. Special guided tour with a concert will be organized for the conference attendees as a part of the conference’s music program.
Curator’s bio:
Paula Matthusen writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space–real, imagined, and remembered. Her music has been performed by Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), orchest de ereprijs, Ballett Frankfurt, Dither, Glass Farm Ensemble, Kathryn Woodard, James Moore, Jody Redhage, Todd Reynolds, Kathleen Supové, and Margaret Lancaster. Her work has been featured at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including Roulette Intermedium, Merkin Concert Hall, Diapason Gallery, Sonic Arts Research Center, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, Sonorities, Third Practice, ArtBots, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, and Konfrontationen. Awards include a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Award, First Prize in the Young Composers’ Meeting Composition Competition, the MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship, a Van Lier Fellowship, and the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Matthusen is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. http://www.paulamatthusen.com/
All works will be reviewed by a panel composed by the Music Program Chairs and the Curators. We may recommend that submissions change category as part of the review process. Authors of accepted works will be requested to submit final music materials taking into account recommendations by the panel. In order for a selected work to be performed during the SMC2012 music program, at least one among the composer(s) and the performer(s) provided by the composer must register to the conference. The registered person is the only one admitted to the technical program, coffee breaks, and lunches.
Performance of a selected work may be cancelled if any of the following occur: (1) final music materials are not submitted by the deadline; (2) the associated HW/SW does not function properly; (3) the documentation is not complete enough to allow the work to be properly rehearsed and performed. Click here for detailed music submission guidelines.